The beauty of genuine primaries

This is a season of contests for political power, no doubt. And obviously, the season is witnessing one of the fundamental problems of all political orders – succession. The current political turmoil is spurred by the question of whether some current leaders should retain power and who replaces others whose terms of office will be expiring on May 29 next year. The Nigerian constitution provides for periodic elections every four years for those elected into the executive and the legislative arms of government and an individual can only be elected twice for same office.

This is why the battle of succession rages across the federation. And expectedly, the problem of succession is imposing great strains on the political order simply because the continuity of some rulers’ reign is about to be broken, while their established patterns of action may be interrupted. Now, the future suddenly becomes uncertain for most incumbents, leading to struggles between established rulers and their rivals. This political crisis, in all climes, tests the character of regimes and that of sitting leaders.

The time to test the character of leaders in positions of authority is now. Yours sincerely, like millions of other right-thinking Nigerians, wants to know those among these leaders who are good students of history. It is trite that power is the most transient of all human possessions and it is quite worrisome why some leaders would take it as do-or-die in their desperate bid to keep it till eternity. That is what the primaries for election of candidates into the about-to-be-vacant seats had taught us.

From the war field of political party primaries, the battle on who governs what state across the states in the country is moving to the public sphere where the people, looking at the candidates presented by the various political parties, will have to make a choice. Basically across the country, it is by now cleared issues on who is running for what office and against whom. The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its virulent opposition, the All Progressives Congress (APC) have concluded their primaries and had come up with elected candidates from a crowd of aspirants that would fly their flags in the February, 2015 elections.

Though the primaries are over, its reverberating aftermath cannot be easily forgotten. While it lasted, it became an amphitheatre wallowing in sometimes perfidious hypocrisy; an arena that turns to a bizarre sinkhole of character assassination and smirking self-righteousness. This is something that cannot easily be eradicated from politics for as long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist which is why Eugene McCarthy espouses that ‘democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.”

Strategically, the time to apportion blames is not at the end of primaries for the daunting task of the main election needs to be tackled. The time for compromise, accommodation and the recognition of differences is now – apologies to McCarthy. But that is not to say that at the appropriate time, all identified disloyally treacherous elements will not be put where they belong, else, they destroy their political party platforms in future.

For now, the will of majority of party membership, through the delegates actually prevailed, thereby corroborating the saying that the best weapon of a democracy is openness – contrary to that of a dictatorship, which is secrecy that is usually devoid of any iota of accountability or transparency. Perhaps, the necessity of primaries for all political parties is more apt now than ever before. The gains of party primaries as exemplified by the way and manner the APC conducted its own deserves credible mention this week. This column wants good governance in all parts of the country but is particularly interested in who governs Lagos and who occupies the presidency in Abuja come May, 2015. Before the primaries was agreed upon, some disgruntled elements led by Muiz Banire, APC national legal adviser, commenced an unnecessary affronts against the person of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State and national leader of the party.

His clamour and that of his co-travellers in political bellyaching was not sincere as previously highlighted in this column but it turned out to be a good thing that the leadership of the party in the state agreed to conduct the primaries. At the end of the day, most aspirants of the party and Banire who was their front – even though he was not an aspirant, that were hitherto beneficiaries of imposition and have even grown to become master of the art of imposition – realised their follies. The APC primaries turned out to be one of the freest and fairest of its type in contemporary Nigeria. Akinwunmi Ambode won with 3735 votes. The next person to him, Obafemi Hamzat scored a distant 1201 votes. The third person, Ganiyu Olanrewaju Solomon scored a laughable 272 votes. Other aspirants could not score above 121votes and it will amount to cheer waste of space to be discussing these political weaklings with over-bloated self-impressions against the man that made them what they are.

Comparatively, the APC primaries in the state stands far above that of PDP that was marred with gun shots and in which at the end of the day, the number of votes cast outnumbered accredited delegates. This column still marvels at how accredited delegates of 806 rose to 867 at the PDP governorship primaries. Even at the centre, the ruling PDP merely converged to ‘coronate’ President Goodluck Jonathan as its sole candidate rather than toe, in this regard, the responsive APC line by conducting a real presidential primaries. This is explicitly PDP abracadabra at work! The APC also conducted their presidential primaries in Lagos in a free and transparent manner that saw Mohammadu Buhari emerge as its presidential candidate.

The APC primaries has done a lot of good to the political image of Tinubu and has confirmed the democratic emptiness of those that are for selfish reasons, blatantly opposed to his leadership. The outcome of the governorship primaries confirmed that the Jagaban of Borgu land remains the ultimate political leader of progressives in the commercial nerve centre of the country. It is now known through the APC primaries that most of the contestants are mere noise makers that should drop the malicious bickering of the past and quickly join the APC governorship candidate’s train before they are permanently left behind. This is the only wise option left for them to embrace as the primaries unfurls on the horizon a new vista of hopeful politics. The battle for political succession should not be a do-or-die affair.